In Memoriam: Merlin Forster (1928–2023)

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• In Memoriam:Merlin Forster (1928–2023)
• Sandra Messinger Cypess

Dear friend, esteemed professor, and prolific scholar, Merlin Forster passed away on August 14, 2023, at the age of 95. He enjoyed a productive and by all measures a successful life, raising five children with his wife Vilda. For those of us who have been attentive readers of LATR, Merlin was much more than that brief description. He had a significant academic career, starting with his doctoral work at the University of Illinois. In 1962, Merlin returned to Illinois as an assistant professor and taught Latin American literature alongside his mentor, Luis Leal, and mentored graduate students, including George Woodyard and myself. Merlin organized and taught the first formal graduate class dedicated solely to Latin American theatre. I cannot recall the specific texts we read, but Merlin had chosen among the few well-known dramatists of the 1960s: Rodolfo Usigli, Emilio Carballido, René Marqués, Egon Wolff, and Jorge Díaz. The one play I distinctly remember reading was Un guapo del 900 de Samuel Eichelbaum. After reading that play and others, I felt comfortable enough as a second-year doctoral student to tell Merlin that I had no idea why he had chosen that play. What redeeming esthetic or political features did it have?! Surely, I thought, there were better plays. My criticism of the play and questioning of his selection became a long running joke. In those days, graduate students simply did not question the canon or the selection of readings, which were drawn from a venerated, almost entirely male-authored body of texts. When Merlin was honored with a symposium on his retirement in 1998, I revisited Un guapo del 900 and learned an interesting lesson for which I gave Merlin credit: the play was far more complex and provocative than I had realized and resonated with events in Argentine society far beyond the time in which it had been written.

Merlin taught me many things about being a college professor. Starting in the classroom, his mentoring became part of our relationship as colleagues and friends throughout the years. In those early days of the 1960s, 70s, and [End Page 145] 80s, the study of Latin American theatre was not granted as much consideration or respect as other genres. Merlin, along with his mentee, George Woodyard, established Latin American theatre as a subject of serious critical inquiry. While I was preparing a paper on French influences in the plays of Xavier Villaurrutia for possible publication, Merlin suggested I see Prof. X, a noted French professor and critic of French theatre. When I went to see Prof. X, he interrupted me and said, “who really cares about what a Mexican playwright thinks of French theatre?” I was stunned and went back to Merlin in tears. After calming me down, he explained that there were prejudices regarding literary traditions and that I should not let this comment deter me from submitting the paper for publication. Thanks to his encouragement, I gave that paper, my first conference presentation as a new Ph.D., as part of a 1969 Kentucky Foreign Language Conference panel organized by George Woodyard, alongside Frank Dauster and Margaret Sayers Peden (see LATR, Vol. 3, No. 1, Fall 1969).

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Taken from the obituary page of the Nelson Family Mortuary.

It should be remembered that even though Merlin taught courses on Latin American theatre and published on a number of playwrights, he started [End Page 146] his career specializing in the poetry of the Contemporáneos. He published several volumes on vanguardismos, including Las vanguardias literarias en México y la América Central: Bibliografía y antología crítica (2001). In short, Merlin’s name appears in many monographs and edited or co-edited books, beginning with An Index to Mexican Literary Periodicals (1966) and Fire and Ice: The Poetry of Xavier Villaurrutia (1976), both of which show his abiding interest in bibliographic research as well as poetry.

Aside from teaching and publishing, Merlin played an important service role as department chair, first at the University of Texas, Austin (1978–1987) and then at Brigham Young University (1989–1993). His...